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I Hate PINs. I Really, Really Do.

BY David Raether, Head Writer

You know how every so often you get roped into dealing with something that you really don’t want to be involved with? I’m not talking something life-threatening like the Ebola Virus or listening to your uncle from Wisconsin lecture you about religion while you’re stuck in a car with him going to a funeral.

No, I’m talking about the modest little peeves of modern life, the ones that really get under your skin.

For instance, you’re sitting in the cafeteria at work, and a nice conversation is going on about the Academy Awards or the California drought or something interesting like that and then some wisenheimer in the group says this: “Hey, did you see that Justin Bieber got arrested?”

Oh, boy, here we go. Next thing you know all ten of you are talking about Justin Bieber. Including you. You’re stuck. Everyone has their views and all of a sudden you find yourself saying you blame his father because you were reading on TMZ.com that he was there in the nightclub that night and also was involved in setting up blocking off the street so that Justin and his friend could have their idiotic drag race and then somebody says, ‘well, that’s not what I heard’ and then you have defend your sources on this topic and bam! Fifteen minutes have gone by and it’s time to return to your desk. As you sit down you realize that the fifteen minutes you spent talking about Justin Bieber makes your teeth hurt.

And don’t think you’re alone. Look what happened to esteemed broadcast journalist Andrea Mitchell during a discussion the other day on the NSA. There was breaking Justin Bieber news. Look at the pain on her face. It’s heartbreaking, and it’s happened to you, too.

This is roughly where I rank teleconference PINs: right up there with a group discussion of Justin Bieber. They’re both just hellishly painful, unnecessarily pointless, and yet, somehow completely inescapable.

You’re part of a design team that has several remote participants (including you) and it’s time for the weekly teleconference. You dial into the teleconference system and they give you a PIN number you have to use to participate. The computer-generated voice rattles off twelve completely random digits. You’re writing them down:

8-9-5-8-1-3… oh, man, your pen stopped working.

Try it again.

8-9-5-8-1-3-8-9… the woman at the desk next to you just got a delivery of a dozen roses from her new boyfriend and she is squealing with happiness.

All right, let’s give this one more try.

Okay, you write: 8-9-5-8-1-3-8-9-4-9-7-5

Whew. Got it. That only took six hours.

Time to key it into your phone. 8-9-5-8-1-… wait, is that a 3 or a 5 I wrote down? Call back and get the PIN all over again. Yes, it was a 3.

And on it goes.

That’s why UberConference doesn’t use PINs. You go to the website, log in, find your conference and click. Voila. Everyone’s there, you can see who’s there, and you’re ready to go. It’s beautiful. This is gonna go great, you think to yourself.

And then the person running the conference call says: “Hey, everybody, welcome to the call. Before we get started, did you see that Justin Bieber was arrested?”